Hint

How much courage does it take

to change your life?

How much bravery must you muster

to say no mas?

We’re taught to believe it takes heave and ho

to alter the course

but that may be just a spell cast over us by sad sacks

to keep us staid.

Legends hint it may only take a small kindness,

such as the shy smile

of a stranger at a street cafe table, to prick you

to the urgency of the now,

to draw the blood of another life.

 

 

 

 

Benediction

You can go for days, even weeks at a time so

busy that you’re blinded to the world’s magic.

Then one evening you take your wife’s hand

and sit and hear an older author tell of only

being interested in writing keepable sentences.

That same older man then talks tenderly to

you afterwards, encouraging you in your own

important work while your wife stands and

listens with tears on her faithful cheeks. Then

you decide to try and get a seat at the mexican

place and behold they have a outside table just

for two and you devour the enchiladas as the

rain holds off and you talk for the first time in

days, maybe even weeks. This happened to me.

And I found light in my tired eyes, saddened at

letting things go that far but grateful for a God

that so loves to arrange for perfect eventides.

 

(author Kent Haruf, and me)

 

 

I Go Alone

I go alone to the Chinese restaurant

across the street. I’m not lonely. I want

to be with me. The waiter doesn’t know

my name but he knows my order:

‘chicken with snow peas, wonton soup -

right, boss?’

I read over the zodiac placemat for the

hundredth time while I wait, always

drawn to me first – 1967, the Sheep,

elegant but creative, timid, prefers

anonymity. ‘Well, maybe,’ I

whisper to myself.

I eat and scrib poems, not elegant

but passable. My meal ends with a

fortune: ‘Everything you do, you do

to make your heart sing.’ This is why

I go alone to the Chinese restaurant

across the street.

 

Complex

Freud wasn’t right about everything.

Then again who wants to be correct

about it all? He was in the true though

when he said a boy who grows beneath

the shade of his mother’s love will forever

have the feeling of conqueror. I know this

feeling for even still in the middleness of

my life I seldom slay the dragon but I face

the fire each day and sure as hell try.

 

 

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

I dreamed of going to West Point. I

had the grades, the recommendations,

the guidance counselor helped me with

the paperwork, but in the end I decided no.

I dreamed of being a doctor, spent sunny

afternoons in college chemistry labs, got 

the degree, took the MCAT, but in the end

I decided no. I never dreamed of attending

seminary because that’s what my father did

but I ended up there and walked out of those

marbled walls a ‘master of divinity’ (dear god).

I walked away from that dream ten years ago;

in the end the wine and women didn’t get me

but the doubt did. In order to put food on our

table I started writing and that table is where

I sit every morning, without fail, trying to wake.

 

Wishes

Be careful what you wish for.

If you wish to be a man’s man

you might find yourself at the end

a hard-pressed man who missed

the daily frailties that soften you

allowing you to close your eyes

and rest in peace. Perhaps the

grander wish is to be a woman’s man

or a child’s man or a dog’s man.

Those are the men missed when

they are finally gone.

 

Blood & Water

The voice of one crying in the wilderness… ~ Mark 1.3

 

Dear, dear John,

were some of those tears

because you knew

the feature presentation was

starting and your

preview was over?

After all, he was the cuz

your old mother went

on and on and on about.

Then heaven goes and pulls

a talking dove out of its hat - 

‘in whom I am well pleased’ - 

when you never got so much

as an ‘attaboy, John!’

No, just day after day of

liars and leches lining up

for a quick rinse and

a peek at the freak.